I don't think it is. There are facts about the universe I alteady don't understand. That's it case closed.

surreptitious57 wrote:Well now I am sure that Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees and Fred Hoyle and Paul Davies shall be overjoyed to hear them selves described in such glowing terms.

I require citations for all of these, except Martin Rees, who wrote one of the most deeply flawed books I ever came across (Just Six Numbers was a pile of the worst festering dreck it's ever been my extreme displeasure to not be able to avoid encountering; the entire premise overlooked the fact that it isn't the six numbers themselves that's important, but the ratios between those numbers), and Paul Davies, winner of the Simpleton Prize. In fact, I'm pretty sure that even they don't accept the fine-tuning argument, not least because when physicists talk about fine-tuning, they aren't talking about fine-tuning arguments, but something entirely different.

So since they accept the fine tuning argument and you refuse to even contemplate it from a theoretical perspective then am more inclined to agree with them than you. Now you appear to want to reject it on philosophical grounds but it is a perfectly valid scientific question in and of itself.

It isn't scientific at all, let alone a valid scientific question. The universe is NOT fine-tuned.

Why you are so dogmatic with regard to it then I have absolutely no idea.

I'm not dogmatic about anything, and you're talking through your arse. Fine-tuning in physics and other scientific arenas is not the fine-tuning argument, which is entirely religious bullshit. Accusing others of dogmatism based entirely on your abject failure to understand the concepts you're blathering about is not winning you any points here.

So as you have failed to convince me of your position we will have to agree to disagree

I agree to exactly fuck all.

Rumraket wrote:I don't think it is. There are facts about the universe I alteady don't understand. That's it case closed.

Dancing dichotomies FTW! </thread>

One of the examples that Rees gave in his book is that life could not exist if there were either two or four spatial
dimensions. Which is something you your self have stated. Presumably then you do accept it but do not think it is
a fine tuning argument as such but why not ? And would it also be more accurate to say that it is not so much the
universe which is fine tuned for life but the building blocks ? So why can not this be a fine tuning argument also ?

surreptitious57 wrote:One of the examples that Rees gave in his book is that life could not exist if there were either two or four spatial
dimensions. Which is something you your self have stated. Presumably then you do accept it but do not think it is
a fine tuning argument as such but why not ? And would it also be more accurate to say that it is not so much the
universe which is fine tuned for life but the building blocks ? So why can not this be a fine tuning argument also ?

Do you think life is special (i.e., magical) in some way, other than because you identify as 'being alive'? Don't you see how circular the fine-tuning argument is? In order even to entertain a 'fine-tuning' concept, you have to start by assuming life is special (finely tuned), rather than just unusual in a statistical sense, which doesn't imply anything other than that it's unusual.

You just happen to be alive, and think that's special? Whoop-dee-doo. Then you might think it's special to think you're special, and fuck that donut, please. The first lesson of this forum is that it's nothing special to think you're special, unless you can bend a spoon with it. Everybody does it, you say? Yeah, everybody shits once every day or so, too. Natural isn't special.

For more on thinking that it's special to think you're special, see: Recursion.

Recursion: see: Recursion.

surreptitious57 wrote:One of the examples that Rees gave in his book is that life could not exist if there were either two or four spatial dimensions. Which is something you your self have stated. Presumably then you do accept it but do not think it is
a fine tuning argument as such but why not ?

The correct formulation would specify extended dimensions, not least because it’s not a bad bet that there are more than three spatial dimensions. That’s by-the-by, though. This isn’t an example of fine-tuning, which has implications beyond the mere existence of conditions under which something can occur. Fine-tuning denotes somebody twiddling knobs, as opposed to knobs making ridiculous arguments based on nothing more than the fact that things are as they are. Certainly, our kind of life couldn’t exist in more or less extended spatial dimensions, but that doesn’t denote anything particularly special. About other kinds of what could reasonably be called life we cannot say, not least because we haven’t got a robust definition of life as yet. Remember all that stuff about the principles of sufficiency and necessity in definitions? We don’t have anything like that for ‘life’, which means that whatever definition one employs in any given situation, one is either excluding members of the set that should reasonably be included or including members that reasonably should not.

And would it also be more accurate to say that it is not so much the universe which is fine tuned for life but the building blocks ?

No, it wouldn’t be any more accurate, because it’s exactly the same statement. The building blocks of the universe ARE the universe. That’s pretty much what it means to be a universe. Cali has dealt with it quite nicely above. Neither the universe nor any of its physical principles are fine-tuned for life, life is fine-tuned for the universe and its physical principles by virtue of having arisen under their purview. All fine-tuning arguments, such as the one Rees makes, have it exactly bass ackwards.

So why can not this be a fine tuning argument also ?

It would be a fine-tuning argument, which is how you can tell it’s bollocks.

As some one who openly embraces death I can hardly be accused of thinking life is special now can I ? I am only interested in the fine tuning argument from a statistical perspective and nothing else. Beyond that I do not think we are special. We may be top of the food chain but so what ? Something has to be so it just happens to be us. Though as far as I am concerned the sooner we become painlessly extinct the better. So right now would be as good a time as any. And then immediately after atomise Earth so there is zero trace of us ever having existed. I hope I have now made my position on this perfectly clear

surreptitious57 wrote:We may be top of the food chain but so what?

Only if, when at sea, we stay in the lifeboat. Now you've done it. You're forcing me to quote Hunter S. Thompson to you.

Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

That said, I have no problem with people adopting viewpoints rendered in terms of quasi-religious pseudo-profundity because (and only because) it admittedly feels good to them and furthermore, doesn't ever get very specific. Keeping the lid on in that situation is a service to humanity. Hence the OP of this thread.

surreptitious57 wrote:I hope I have now made my position on this perfectly clear

Nope. All you've just done in that post is toss your toys out of the pram. What was it you wanted to tell us? Basically, the idea of fine tuning is one of the soiled nappies of philosophy. A change is as good as a rest.

We're not even top of the food chain in our own bodies, let alone the actual top in any other sense

Well we finally seem to getting somewhere. As I have just said I myself am not the least bit interested in any philosophical or religious argument for fine tuning but the scientific one [ yes I will accept there is no such thing now ] You have clarified it in more detail and it is starting to make sense. However you just saying something is idiotic shit does not tell me anything at all

So you seem to be saying that the very term fine tuning cannot be employed under any circumstances. Not even if one is only referring to mathematical improbability and nothing else. As one I am I familiar with it may take a while for me to stop using it but try I will. Now what about the Strong / Weak Anthropic Principles ? Obviously the former cannot be considered so what about the latter ? Is that a fine tuning argument or not ? Incidentally the quote about the building blocks being fine tuned for life was made by Paul Davies. Though I decided to omit this fact for I knew you would rubbish it once you realised that it was him who said it. I know that you think he is bit airy for you but he is a physicist and so knows his subject. I would recommend his books but do not think you would bother reading them so will not bother. But I may buy the Rees book just for the physics

surreptitious57 wrote:
So you seem to be saying that the very term fine tuning cannot be employed under any circumstances. Not even if one is only referring to mathematical improbability and nothing else. As one I am I familiar with it may take a while for me to stop using it but try I will. Now what about the Strong / Weak Anthropic Principles ? Obviously the former cannot be considered so what about the latter ? Is that a fine tuning argument or not ? Incidentally the quote about the building blocks being fine tuned for life was made by Paul Davies. Though I decided to omit this fact for I knew you would rubbish it once you realised that it was him who said it. I know that you think he is bit airy for you but he is a physicist and so knows his subject. I would recommend his books but do not think you would bother reading them so will not bother. But I may buy the Rees book just for the physics

It's not about what one denotes by the phrase 'fine tuning'. It's about what one connotes. With more careful language, one doesn't have to connote much of anything. Nobody's telling you what you can or cannot say. What they're telling you is that you can't hide behind obfuscation in connoting something you do not simply denote. Nobody's forcing you (or Davies, or Rees et al.) to use the word 'tuning' at all. They're pandering to people with religious sentiments (because they know the percentages) in order to sell BOOKS. Fuck them, if you still want to pursue the argument from popularity AKA the argument from bank-balance.

The word 'tuning' itself is full of 'purpose'. The word 'purpose' is full of 'intelligence'. You can fucking do the rest, because pursuing the argument from popularity is as wrong as a wrong thing on wrong juice, to quote a famous RatSkepper.

hackenslash wrote:We're not even top of the food chain in our own bodies, let alone the actual top in any other sense

Never mind that. I'm waiting for the convocation of politic worms. I'm waiting, in fact, to become the diet of worms.

Think of the mayfly. What chance, boredom? Why would anyone think a mayfly is a mere machine and we are not? Special sauce? The alternative is to become a Buddhist. Oh, wait. Special sauce. It's like betting on both black and red in roulette using a counterfeit coin.

surreptitious57 wrote:Well we finally seem to getting somewhere. As I have just said I myself am not the least bit interested in any philosophical or religious argument for fine tuning but the scientific one [ yes I will accept there is no such thing now ] You have clarified it in more detail and it is starting to make sense. However you just saying something is idiotic shit does not tell me anything at all

Surely it tells you that it’s idiotic shit. Are you saying that my comment has no information content? See how this works?

So you seem to be saying that the very term fine tuning cannot be employed under any circumstances.

Not remotely. Fine-tuning is a perfectly valid term in the sciences, but it doesn’t mean what the apologists think it means. When, for example, Turok says that the Inflationary Model is fine-tuned, what he’s actually saying is that there is a problem with the model that requires explanation, because certain parameters (energy density in this case) have to fall within a very narrow range of values if the model is correct. These are not fine-tuning arguments, but highlighting potential problems with scientific theories.

Obviously the former cannot be considered so what about the latter ? Is that a fine tuning argument or not ?

No, it’s only a recognition that, if the universe weren’t conducive to life as we know it, we wouldn’t be here to know it. Again, the universe is not fine-tuned for life, it’s the other way around. Life as we know it exists because the conditions that allow for it persist.

Incidentally the quote about the building blocks being fine tuned for life was made by Paul Davies. Though I decided to omit this fact for I knew you would rubbish it once you realised that it was him who said it.

Not at all, not least because the genetic fallacy is among my least favourite. I rubbish the claim because it’s demonstrably bollocks. Davies should really spend a bit of time down the hall talking to his esteemed colleague, who should have no trouble demolishing this claim.

I know that you think he is bit airy for you but he is a physicist and so knows his subject. I would recommend his books but do not think you would bother reading them so will not bother. But I may buy the Rees book just for the physics

What you do or do not think is irrelevant. I’ve read most of his work, as well as Rees’. There isn’t much that’s been published for the layman about physics in the last 50 years that I haven’t read or don’t have on my reading list.

Cito di Pense wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:
...

The word 'tuning' itself is full of 'purpose'. The word 'purpose' is full of 'intelligence'. You can fucking do the rest, because pursuing the argument from popularity is as wrong as a wrong thing on wrong juice, to quote a famous RatSkepper.

Indeed, and that is why I was careful to use the phrase "apperarance of fine tuning" when describing the universe as a part of a multiverse, in which most universes are probably unable to support life. This occurs (surprise, surprise!) because the amazing fact that the only universe we can exist in is one that happens to support life.

EDIT: By "multiverse", I do NOT, of course mean the MWI type, I mean the "fecund universes" of Lee Smolin.

hackenslash wrote:
Are you saying that my comment has no information content ? See how this works ?

That information content was practically zero which is why I was sceptical of what you were saying
When you say x is idiotic shit I expect to be told why x is idiotic shit otherwise it is just your opinion
You need to realise that unless I am told why then I am none the wiser. You should already know this
Any way you did eventually explain it to my satisfaction so think we shall draw a line under it for now

hackenslash wrote:We're not even top of the food chain in our own bodies, let alone the actual top in any other sense

You have just re-defined "food chain", hack.

Did somebody get the number of that donkey cart?

hackenslash wrote:Did somebody get the number of that donkey cart?

You are bending words to fit your nonsensical ideas.

EDIT: If words mean exactly what you want them to at the time, you will have communications problems.

Not playing the game with you. Already told you this. Speak to yourself if you wish. This will be the last comment in your direction from me.

Edit: Except to note the deep irony of comments about difficulty communicating from Mr Up-to-scratch-English.

To say that "you" are either at or not at the top of the "food chain in your own body" is meaningless twaddle.